Chiang's meditative process creates detailed paintings with intricate webs of forms and vibrant ceramics fluctuating between fragility and strength

New York-based artist Julia Chiang (born 1978) is known for her paintings and ceramics, which use abstract compositions and organic forms to evoke a connection to the vastness of the universe. Her bulbous ceramics transport us through their sensual shapes and her organic imagery borrows from the physical--medical scans, internal body liquids and environments--as well as the psychological. A sense of connectivity, of the body in nature and the environment that surrounds us, has always been part of the artist's approach and is fundamental to her work. "I'm always interested in our bodies as vessels, what we contain and what we cannot. All that comes out of us, all that is within us," says Chiang. This first monograph on Chiang presents her work from the late 1990s to the present and features an essay by Eugenie Tsai, writer and former senior curator at the Brooklyn Museum.